


the other edge of the sea

by triplesalto



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beard Kink, Claiming Bites, F/M, Having to Stay Quiet/Quiet Sex, Protectiveness, Rain Sex, Reunion Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-19 09:53:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10637448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplesalto/pseuds/triplesalto
Summary: In which Lucy finds a way back to Narnia, and to the man she loves.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eternal Scribe (Shadowcat)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/gifts).



Once there was a girl whose name was Lucy Pevensie. She had been a Queen of Narnia, and a voyager on the famous quest of the _Dawn Treader_. She had had adventures beyond her wildest imagination, and rode on a lion’s back.

Now she was seventeen years old (for the second time), and alone.

Lucy had never been alone before. She was a sunny girl, full of determination and bravery and affection, and she had always been surrounded by love. It had sometimes been hard to be the youngest in the family, but she’d mostly liked it. You knew who you were, as the youngest. You had protectors and confidantes, friends and rivals, partners-in-crime and comrades-in-arms.

One night, the week after she got out of hospital, Lucy stood in the garden of her deserted house – the house that still had the ghost of Susan’s laughter in the stairwell, the smell of Peter’s surreptitious cigarettes in his window seat – and looked up at the stars.

“Who am I now?” Lucy asked them.

But the stars were Earth stars. They did not answer.

❧

Lucy was hardy. It was not the first time she had lost someone; she had been to war in Narnia, and not everyone came back from wars. Loss, and grief, and the long journey to acceptance were already marked on her bones.

This, however, was worse. This was everything.

She concentrated on taking one breath, and then another, and slowly the great crushing weight of her sorrow became a constant heartache, a missing limb instead of a gushing wound. The weeks and months began to pass, and Lucy learned to live in a world without her family.

But joy had left that world, and Lucy grew into a somber young woman. Her face was tight, the corners of her mouth pinched, a furrow between her brows. She grew too thin, and those who cared for her (for Lucy was a girl whom people loved) worried that she was fading away. As the months turned into years, a Narnian would have hardly recognised their laughing Queen Lucy in her shadowed face.

She read history at university. Her interests were in unexplained and occult disappearances; her friends found that it was impossible to make long-term plans with her, for on any given weekend she might drop everything and rush off to do field research, pottering around in dusty archives and making personal inspections of supposedly-haunted places. 

After these expeditions, there was always something brittle in her eyes.

❧

The summer she was twenty-one, Lucy found what she had been looking for.

It was a meadow thick with wildflowers, innocent and serene under the noontime sun. But in a dusty archival box of crinkled letters, she had read a barrack-room tale of a suspected 17th-century witch, who had undergone trial by water and vanished into the lake, her body taken by Satan with much dramatic turbulence as the village screamed.

While the tale might have been complete invention, or gained elaborate embroidery over the centuries, the specifics in the soldier’s tale had piqued Lucy’s interest. And here was the meadow, and the lake, and the oak tree the witch’s young lover had sobbed underneath. It was a better prospect than many of Lucy’s investigations had been. 

She dove to the bottom of the lake, peering around through blurry eyes and trying to sense any sort of magical pull. But it didn’t seem very haunted; it seemed like a pleasant sunny lake, another dead-end. She kept looking until her breath ran out, then closed her eyes and swam back up, already thinking about her next prospect.

When she broke the surface of the water, there was a lion standing on the bank.

❧

“This must stop, little one,” Aslan said.

Lucy had run to embrace him, wet as she was. Now she lifted her head from his mane. “I can’t.”

She was not little any longer. She was a grown woman, and she knew the song in her heart.

Aslan looked disappointed, and Lucy felt the quiver try to start in her spine. He was not a tame lion. “This is your world, my child. You must learn to live in it, for it does not do to live in dreams. Those who are lost are not lost forever, but they are beyond your reach.”

“I know that,” Lucy said. Her face was wet from the water, but her eyes were dry. “They died. I saw them, did you know that? People pulled me out of the wreckage and saved my life. I wish they hadn’t. Susan was next to me, and they took me away from her, but I saw her.”

“Life is not always happy,” Aslan said. “But you cannot flee it.”

Lucy looked around at the meadow, away from Aslan’s searching eyes. His mane was warm under her fingers, and when she looked back at him, she felt more at peace than she had in years. “I’m not running away from life,” she said. “I’m running towards it.”

They say that Aslan sees into hearts. I cannot tell you the right of that; but I can tell you that he looked at Lucy for a long time, and she did not look away. 

When he finally sighed, she let her knees unlock. 

“Do you wish to return to Narnia so desperately, that you will spend your life in this world in the pursuit?” he asked.

There was disappointment in his voice, and Lucy stiffened herself against it. “Yes,” she said, and stroked his mane. “For the others it was adventures, and stories, and the occasional nightmare, but for me it was everything. The only reason I could bear to leave it was because the others were here. Without them I have nothing.”

“The longing may go away in time.”

“No,” Lucy said, and the certainty rang in her voice. “Narnia is my home, Aslan. If you won’t send me back, then I will keep looking for a way back until the day I die.”

Eventually she would find a portal. She had to believe that. She had to. The pirates who became Telmarines had found one. There was no way to determine _when_ she would emerge; it would be almost impossible to find herself when she most truly longed to be. But any Narnia would be better than this barren land, where the stars were empty and the animals mute, and all laughter was mockery. 

Aslan was silent for a long time, as the birds chattered in the great oak tree.

Perhaps he saw the sadness in the stoop of Lucy’s shoulders, the sharp fragility of her too-thin frame. Perhaps he thought of the years of searching Lucy had already made, and foresaw the years that stretched ahead. Perhaps he remembered a little girl’s faith and bravery, the joy in her laughter and the light in her smile. Perhaps he saw the ghosts that hovered at her elbow, protective and concerned, defying death itself to stand by her.

“If this is what you truly need,” he said at last, “then go once more into the lake.”

For one astonished moment, Lucy could not breathe. Then she threw her arms around his neck, feeling as if she was a little girl again. “Thank you, dear Aslan,” she said, her voice choked with the tears she had not shed in years.

This time she felt the magic in the water from the second she stepped into the shallows.

She dived down, her heart singing.

❧

And now, as you see, the story has reached Narnia once again. It might have been that Lucy found herself in the world of King Frank and Queen Helen, and danced the nights away with nymphs and river-gods, long before she had first found a magical wardrobe. It might have been that she found herself in the world of Shift and Puzzle, and had only a short time before she came to Aslan’s Country and found her family again.

As it happens, however, Aslan had seen more in the shadows of Lucy’s eyes than she realized.

When she rose to the surface again, sputtering slightly for air, she was not in a strange place. 

“Why,” she said, looking about her, “it is the pond in the apple orchard at Cair Paravel,” and she began to laugh, and then perhaps she cried a little, because it was not every day that your dreams came true.

Eventually she wiped her eyes and headed towards the Great Hall, because she was wet and it was nearly tea-time. It might be deserted, as it had been the second time she had come to Narnia, but she thought not. She felt as if there were people here, that at any moment she might see a centaur, or a dryad, or a Horse; and when she smelled the familiar aroma of buttery scones from the direction of the kitchens, she hurried her steps, her heart full.

This was how she rounded a corner and nearly tripped over a puppy in her haste.

“Careful!” someone said, and Lucy felt strong hands under her elbows, helping her upright. 

She looked up into Caspian’s face.

❧

I should note at this point in our story that the tale of the _Dawn Treader_ , being focused on adventure and the grand quest of the seven lords as it was, was in certain ways incomplete. While Eustace became a dragon, and Lucy met the Duffers, and they sailed to the rim of the world, there were other forces at work beyond those of the quest.

Lucy had still looked young, but she had lived some twenty-seven years; and as she came to know Caspian over those months, she had fallen in love with him as irrevocably as she had fallen in love with Narnia, all those hundreds of years before. 

She had never spoken to him of it. She had seen how he looked at Ramandu’s daughter, and she had known her time in Narnia was the sands of an hourglass ebbing away. It would not have been fair to him to let him know of her love, when she was doomed to leave him. She had locked it away in her heart, and put on her bravest face. She had always been brave.

But now, as she walked in the gardens of Cair Paravel with him, and knew there would be no bitter farewell, Lucy felt the padlocks on those locks beginning to work themselves open.

“It has been ten years since you left us,” Caspian said.

Lucy could see the passage of time in his face. There were not as many lines as there were on hers, but he had grown an impressive beard, and his eyes were crinkled from laughter. She would not have thought she would have liked the beard, but she found that she did, and her hand tightened on his arm.

“Have they been good years?” she asked.

He was silent for a minute. “Yes,” he said, at last. “My wife died four years ago, and I have grieved for her. But our son is a happy child, and Narnia has recovered from Telmarine misrule. I am content.”

“Merely content?” That morning, Lucy would have settled for merely content in a heartbeat, but now her chest felt tight and her breath fast, and she found that she wanted more, much more.

Caspian stopped under an apple tree, turning to face her. His gaze was hot on her skin, and she turned her face up, drinking it in. 

“I have missed you,” he said, his voice deep.

“I too,” Lucy whispered.

“Do not leave me in suspense,” Caspian said. “I have loved only two women in this life, and one of them is you. Tell me that you have come to me because your heart beats as quickly as mine.”

Lucy could not speak. She stood on tiptoe and put her arms around his neck, kissing him for the first time and feeling all the padlocks shatter, as he caught her in his arms.

❧

It started raining, there in the apple orchard, but Lucy didn’t care.

Caspian had spread his cloak on the ground while she stripped her wet clothes off, and the look on his face when he turned and she went to him would stay with her the rest of her life. It had been the look of a drowning man who sees land, and she had kissed him, fierce and sure.

Now he raised his head from between her legs. “Shall we go inside?”

She reached a hand down to trail along his cheek, thrilling to the way he unconsciously turned his head into her touch. “I like the rain.”

How to say that it made her feel real, that the warm drizzle made her heart sing, grounding her in the world she loved, in the arms of the man she loved? 

“Well,” Caspian said, the husk in his voice making her legs weak, “so do I now.”

His beard scratched the inside of her thighs, making her shiver with delight. He was not the first man she had slept with, but she had never been with a bearded man before. It was intoxicating, the contrast between the rough scratch of his beard and the velvet smoothness of his tongue, as he plied it amidst her folds.

“Don’t stop,” she said, holding him in place with her feet, feeling the huff of his laugh against her innermost places. Her pleasure was spiralling inside her, and with every breath she took she felt more alive. “Don’t stop, _please_.”

Caspian did not stop. His fingers on her hips were like brands, and his mouth sure and firm.

Lucy was vaguely aware that she had to be quiet. A woman screaming in the garden would bring guards, cooks, hunting hounds, curious onlookers of all kinds; a castle is never deserted. And that was hardly the way to introduce herself as their soon-to-be Queen.

(Lucy had disliked wearing a crown, the first time she was Queen of Narnia. It had pinched, and she had always been eager to put it back in the jewels cupboard and run off with Edmund. Now she thought she might not mind so much, at least for a while. It would be the tangible manifestation of the world she had lost and regained.)

However much Lucy might be trying to be quiet, though, it was becoming increasingly hard to do so when Caspian was doing _that_.

She swore, using an Archenland word that must be archaic by now, although apparently not because Caspian was laughing, and his laughter made his beard do truly amazing things, and she clutched at his hair and sobbed up into the rain, and Caspian slipped a finger inside her, and between his finger and his tongue she came undone.

When she opened her eyes again he was lying beside her on his cloak, his eyes inexpressibly fond, his mouth turned up at the corners, his entire face so dear to her that she caught her breath with the force of it. 

“Worth waiting for?” he asked, tangling their fingers together.

She kissed him by way of answer, and trailed her free hand down his body to pull insistently at his trousers. “Off,” she said into his mouth. “I want to see you.”

He sat up, smiling, and shrugged out of his shirt. There were scars on his torso. Lucy knew what the marks of swords looked like, and she reached out to trace them, first with her hand and then with her mouth. 

“If you want me out of my clothes, my lady,” he said, as she kissed his collarbone, “you will have to desist.”

Lucy bit him, leaving her mark on his shoulder. This world was hers again, all she had longed for, and _he_ was hers, hers, hers.

Caspian growled deep in his throat and put a strong hand under her chin, lifting it up for a kiss that had both teeth and desperation. She was not the only one to have longed.

As Caspian’s trousers joined his shirt – as she put her hands on his shoulders and shoved him down onto the cloak, climbing on top of him as his hands came to rest on her hips – as she placed his cock at her entrance and began to let herself down – Lucy’s heart was so full of joy that she felt it flowing out of her, in waves of happiness. 

“You are so beautiful,” Caspian said, his voice reverent, and Lucy knew that she was.

She rode him there in the apple orchard, and the feeling of him inside her was a fullness she had ached for; but it was not only his cock that she had wanted, although that was perfection, but the knowledge of what it meant. She could have this joy for the rest of her days. She could fuck him in their chambers and in the apple orchard and on their thrones and in the weapons room (she had always liked the thrill of danger) and on picnics in the countryside and in the guest rooms in foreign palaces and in the quiet peace of their bed. She could take him in her mouth and make him shout underneath her, his fingers tightening in the sheets or resting on her hair. She could wake him in the dappled morning sunlight with a hand on his cock, then take him inside her with one sinuous motion, swallowing his moans with her own greedy mouth. She could drag her nails down his back as he moved inside her, leaving marks that would twinge as he took sword practice for a week, giving him a thrill every time.

And in between all the times they would fuck, she could spend her days at his side and her nights in his arms, hearing his laughter and touching the curve of his smile, feeling his joy and sharing his life. They could grow old together – no more magical age regression, she turned into a child by the whim of a god – and she could love him and be loved by him until the day she died.

Caspian cried out, his hands tightening on her hips until Lucy knew they would bruise, and she laughed, throwing her head back to the sky. 

The rain fell on her face like a benediction, and she rode the waves of their pleasure until she collapsed in his arms. 

They dozed together as the clouds blew away and the sun came out, the warm rays caressing their naked skin.

❧

Lucy wore Caspian’s cloak up to the castle, over her wet clothes. She could feel the finger-marks on her hips and the beard-burn between her thighs as she moved, and she smiled, leaning her head against Caspian’s shoulder.

She was no longer alone.

“Come, my love,” Caspian said, his voice soft, and led her into Cair Paravel.

❧❧❧


End file.
